Includes amazon, apple, facebook and google. This week on the communicators a discussion about antitrust and regulation. Joining us, Jennifer Huddleston of the american Action Forum, and Barry Lynn of the open markets institute. Mr. Lynn, are we entering a new era of antitrust action . Guest thank you for having me today, peter. Absolutely. This is, were off the charts in terms of where weve been for the last 30 years in terms of competition, antimonopoly, and in the last year we had five antitrust lawsuits against Google And Facebook. We have all kinds of actions against amazon. We have people talking about new philosophies of Competition Policy. This is all radically new, and this conversation can turn out to be truly transformative for the United States because Competition Policy sounds kind of technical but this is like, its underneath everything. So this is an exciting moment, truly important moment for the United States, and thats a good thing for all of us. Host Jennifer Huddleston. Guest uncle to start by agreeing that a think we are seeing an increased conversation around the appropriate use of antitrust, and that this is a pivotal moment in the future of Competition Policy in the United States. Whats important is that we stick to a principled approach based on the Consumer Welfare standards when were analyzing these cases against any company, whether its the tech giants who have often found themselves under various elements of scrutiny, whether its related to antitrust or Data Privacy or content moderation, or any other industry, that the consumer will for standard provides an objective standard that has shown to be highly adaptive as well as providing appropriate focus on allowing a competitive market the best serves consumers. Host Jennifer Huddleston, are monopolies inherently bad in your viewpoint . Guest monopolies are bad but we should be careful about the use of the term monopoly. A lot of times we see this presumption these Days Release Rhetoric around that all the companies are monopolies. Rather than focusing on the actual economic and legal meaning of that word. Antitrust sorry, antitrust is an important tool to ensure that consumers are receiving the benefits of competitive marketplace but we want to make sure were not acting on a presumption that big is bad or big is automatically the same as a monopoly and instead are applying the principal economic and legal ideas to analyze such situations. Host mr. Lynn. Guest i actually want to support Something Jennifer just said, which is big is not always bad. When back to the beginning of the Country Weve had monopolies, big things. At the very beginning of the country was a monopoly that reached everywhere. Today we have a super large corporations, and the answer is not always breaking them up. The basic rule is in Competition Policy, the founding of the country, is that if you can break it up then do so because it makes it safer for democracy, safer for human liberty. But there are certain things you Cant Break up. You Cant Break up railroads. You Cant Break up the telephone companies. You Cant Break up the electricity company. I would even argue any case of certain aspects of Google And Facebook and amazon, we dont want to break everything up there. Theres certain areas where we can have online monopolies, but thats why we have this other tool, which is to neutralize the monopolies, to make sure that they dont favor certain people and disfavor others. Thats actually the base of rule of law in the private economy, actually the Basis Rule of law in the politically, in our society. So yeah, many cases we dont want to break things up, but when we dont break things up we must make them neutral. This is the essence of what americans have done since the founding of this country. Host so mr. Lynn, lets look at google and its Search Engine that faced scrutiny for many years as being a monopoly and its become the dominant player when it comes to search function. How does one neutralize about, or should that part of google be neutralized . Guest yes, absolutely. So the way to neutralize something like a Search Engine or neutralize a facebook is the basically ensure theres a limit to how personalize any kind of search can become. That theres clear rules what kind of information the Search Engine can determine for you. And if you want to personalize it you are the person in charge of what is personalized. Right now what we have is when you go and search on google or if you enter a search on amazon like youre looking to buy something, google and amazon manipulate you. They take you to certain things and to take you away from others. They try to get you to buy certain things and he tried to get you to listen to certain kinds of recordings and to try to get you to read certain books. We dont want to be manipulated. As human beings we want to be able to be fully in charge of all aspects of our lives. And simple traditional rules that we have applied to every single Network Monopoly in our history, we apply these to Google And Facebook and amazon, and we can make them absolutely safe for all of us while continuing to enjoy all the benefits of these technologies. Host Jennifer Huddleston. Guest if i may jump in here, oftentimes when were debating tech companies we really have this question of what the market is. A lot of the debates around antitrust and tech companies really boil down to this because people like to say things like google does a monopoly in search but even the example just given shows a lot of searches now start on amazon. We also have competitors like being putting their own Search Engine and we have competitors that are providing a product for a very specific market, for example, those that are more privacy sensitive such as Duck Duck duck. What weve seen is this continues to be an innovative and dynamic market and that oftentimes those companies that are successful are successful because of their the ones that consumers find most beneficial. If we had been having this conversation a a decade ago we wouldve been discussing how headlines like how yahoo one of the search wars. Instead what he saw was an innovative product that was better able to serve consumers. Guest this is important issue is what kind of monopoly. People like refer to the actually one of our great libertarian scholars, milton friedman. Milton friedman back in 1962 and a book called democracy and capitalism, he wrote that a monopoly is any corporation that has sufficient power to affect the terms in which business is done in the market. So according to that definition, google is absolutely a monopoly in Search And Android and in chrome and then mapping, and in many other aspects of its business. Because it has sufficient power, and all of these areas basically dictate terms to the people who want to get to market, can dictate information to the people who are searching for information. This is a very backward looking argument to argue that Google And Facebook, amazon are not in many respects monopolists. The question is what to do about these monopolies, and the good news is that we have a huge number of tools, weve got some really smart people who know how to use those tools so that we the american people get the continued use these services in ways that are good for us economically but also safe for us politically so we dont have Google And Facebook threatening our democracy, which is what they do today, that we dont have amazon threatening our entire open commercial system, which is what it is doing today. Guest i think we Cant Neglect the importance of innovation in these markets, and the importance of disrupters that we see time and time again. While its important we do use the tools that we have an antitrust arsenal, when it is appropriate, whether its at the seat or do uag enforcement, whether its and scrutiny given to mergers and acquisitions under the Consumer Welfare standard. Weve seen those are largely adaptable to a very dynamic market like the Technology And Telecom space. But oftentimes its been innovation that has really driven competition, whether we are looking at something like two decades ago when we thought that a merger between two Video Rental Giant might create monopoly and missed the emergence of things like netflix and red box that were changing that entertainment industry. Similarly, when you look at things like the browser wars, we missed the conversations around mobile to completely change the way we access the internet. If we allow innovations to continue to interrupt what those next expected. Sites often look like they cant be toppled until the next instructor come around. Guest again i strongly agree with much of what jennifer is just said, innovation is fantastically important. The key place where i disagree with jennifer is who are the innovators and youre the antiinnovators . What weve seen time and again, this goes back through history, back hundreds of years is that the monopolist is an antiinnovators. I remember when google came out in the late 1990s. I was a very early adopter as a writer as a journalist, at very early user of google. I loved google. It was so much better than anything else but that was a long time ago. As google has become more powerful, and facebook has become more powerful and amazon has become allpowerful in each of their certain areas, they use their power to crush the upstart, to crush the innovators, to force all of us in society to walk and certain technological pathways and not to go down better pathways. So theres all these better futures out there for us as a people that we cant get to because monopolists stand in our way, because Google And Facebook and Amazon Stand in our way. One other area where i will just point to jennifer is it support a member you are talking about the browser wars, lets remember what happened when he came to browser wars which was the last great tech antitrust lawsuit, which was against microsoft because of its manipulation of the browser market, back in the late 1990s. It was that case, that lawsuit that created the opportunity for Google And Facebook and amazon to get where they are today. Antitrust equals innovation. Thats just a fact. It is provable. We had seen this time and again over history. Guest you are right that innovation is one of the factors that is considered even under the Consumer Welfare standard when it comes to antitrust. I do think when we talk about the Microsoft Case or some of these other past tech cases there are some other lessons to be learned as well. Like i mentioned, while the browser Wars Fight was going on witnessing the emergence of mobile, and we didnt necessarily see microsoft get into the mobile market the way that one would expect in part because they were fighting an antitrust case that theres a lot of dispute about whether or not that was quoteunquote successful. As we were looking at the ct players, looking at things like facebook or google, there are a lot of upstarts that are continuing to compete. For those of us who came about in the early internet era, its hard for us to imagine that some of the platforms that with the for social media may not be as popular with the next generation. But if you look at it, Gen Z is not getting on facebook in the same way. We are seeing other alternatives arise to serve certain market needs and seeing the market continued to evolve. So i think its important we consider not just Status Quo as it currently is, but what else might be going on so we dont presume, we dont interfere in a market that continues to be innovative and competitive that could prevent consumers from having the benefits that they enjoy tragic again, jennifer is right here. Folks in Gen Z they are not using facebook in the way their parents used facebook. They regard facebook as old and backward looking. They are all like using instagram. If they are overseas a lot of folks use whatsapp for a lot of their communications. But you know who owns instagram . Do you know who owns whatsapp . Facebook owns instagram. Facebook owns whatsapp. They purchased whatsapp. They purchased facebook to make sure they controlled the future. They did want someone else to control the future. They didnt want to have real competition. They wanted to make sure when Gen Z went poking around looking for a different way to communicate, that they controlled that way. And they are so successful at it, this is one the things we need to focus on is like what is it that Google And Facebook, why are you doing this, why do they want power . Why do the, has agreed all the systems of control . They want to do this so they can make money. And they make money by selling advertisements. The two of these corporations together have pretty much captured control of online advertising. There share, total share of the two of them together is Way North of 50 of all online advertising and that share continues to grow. We are talking now over 200 billion in advertising each year that goes into their pockets. Money goes to their pockets. There is big money in what the deal, and they are very successful in using their power and they get a lot of money in exchange for doing that. And the fact that their monopolizing all this advertising, all this revenue have all of these knock on effects which we have a society has to deal with, which is its crushing our journalism because theres the money for advertising in journalism. They are manipulating our speech in order to sell us more advertising because what they do is they ramp up the Manipulation Machine so that advertisers can manipulate us. Thats their business model. We have a crushing of a journalism. We have a manipulation of speech. We have a crisis, Democracy Crisis in this country. And lets be honest, Google And Facebook have played a huge role in creating this Democracy Crisis in actually endangering our democracy and our personal liberties. Lets face up to that. Lets deal with that. Lets all get together and figure how were going to have after 250 years of democracy how we are going to continue to have this democracy. Guest some want to start by mentioning that when we talk about the apps that Gen Z is flocking to come there are also a lot of apps that are not owned by facebook that are growing in popularity. Tiktok is an example. Snapchat is an example. They are completely different ideas in social media, things like clubhouse is an audio only app that are changing the way we interact with this new technology. As a result just presuming that Gen Z is on facebook in a different way, i think is an entirely that isnt a ton active. When Witch Hunt Advertising this is a key point where we discussed that Market Definition again. We really need to ask what are we defining as the Advertising Market in the space. Oftentimes we see very narrow definitions proposed such it effectively is the at the facebook are controlled by facebook. On the other hand, when you think about it from a Buyers Point of view or you look at the incredibly diverse levels of the Advertising Ecosystem where there are many different elements involved, there may be more competition that doesnt necessarily come through on that surface level. Again a lot of times when were debating what the appropriate role of antitrust is, is an antitrust issue, it really comes down to how do we see the market. It shouldnt be just had received the markets but how do consumers expense the market. Consumer can mean a lot of different things, particularly in this context. Sometimes consumer is the person consuming the ad and sometimes consumer is the person placing the ad, or at different points within the Advertising Ecosystem. Host and youre watching the key make it on cspan. This is a weekly look at Tech And Telecommunications issues and policy. This week were talking about antitrust and some of the issues surrounding that took our guests are Jennifer Huddleston of the american Action Forum, and Barry Lynn, executive director of the open markets institute. Mr. Lynn, what is your organization . Guest our organization is a nonprofit group. We take the money from any businesses. And what we do is we do the best we can to understand how concentrated powers threatens our democracy, threatens our individual liberties. And we help people to learn how americans americans of previous generations facing this very similar threats in the past dealt with those threats, and figure out like how we can update the tools they use, the laws they use, the policies that they used to create a democracy, create, protect human liberty against concentrated private power, and do that today. Host and if you take the money from businesses, where does your funding come from . Guest out money comes from foundations. Host and Jennifer Huddleston, same questions to you about the american Action Forum trek to the american Action Forum we are a 501 c 3 what would calmly be referred to as a Think Tank Kind of in the d. C. Area. We were originally started by Doug Holtzeakin and we focus on a variety of issues. My Portfolio Focus on the intersection of Law And Technology which includes a lot of exciting issues these days, things such as antitrust but also issued related to section 230 and the regulatory state and we of scholars working on a wide range of issue areas, everything from Budget Policy to labor market, to energy and financial services. Host a a couple years ago there was a large Court Case here in d. C. When at t bought directv. Now at t is telling many of those assets to discovery. Is this going to be another large antitrust issue in any way . Guest its really interesting we see this dynamic emerging time and again, where at times these mergers that we were very, very concerned about years later end up being completely different, whether its aol and time warner or in this case the at t case. What is interesting though is were seeing a lot of scrutiny of these media mergers and of the changing Media Landscape. We have seen a lot of changes and the last few decades in the Media Landscape with the growth of streaming, with changes in who the competitors are. Im certain well see a very thorough analysis of what this change might mean for the competition landscape. But again its important look at how dynamic this landscape is and what this also shows about how this industry is changing. Host and the fact that it hasnt become yet the issue that it was a couple of years ago, doesnt to speak to the Significance Or Insignificance of the linear tv . Guest i think what it showed is weve seen kind of a disruptor emerge, and that we now have a wide range of choices. Most of us as consumers can think about all the different streaming services we have used, particularly over the last year, to keep us entertained. As a result we had seen a broadening of this market when it comes to competition such that there is again this dynamic from innovation that completely changes the way we see the market. Host Barry Lynn. Guest i think its a great thing at t decide to sell off of those streaming services and those broadcast services, and at the time when the deal was announced three years ago, we opposed it but we also said that we thought it was a done deal. We thought at t was they thought they could go and compete because they control pretty much half the wireless Communications Hardware System in the United States, and they could compete with the big boys, compete with facebook, amazon, google. And we said there is no way at t, as big as they are, as powerful as they are, can actually compete with these of the companies because theres they are so much more powerful. I was at the time three years ago we predicted this is not a wise move by at t, and to think that is now been poured out. The selloff by at t, the spinoff of those properties, what it demonstrates is the power of google, Facebook And Amazon. The fact that even a company, a corporation as powerful as at t, there is no way that theyre going to get ahead. This is true for comcast. Verizon, whoever it is, were dealing with, as powerful as they are and as much power as had to screw us over in of basic services, the fact is they aint going to get more powerful. Theyre not going, going to make any inroads against google, Facebook And Amazon. The concentration of power, the pyramid of power taking place in the United States continues unabated, and this at T Spinoff is a demonstration of both at t making a bad decision to try to get out of it but also a google, Facebook And Amazon being the masters of america today. Host so Barry Lynn, given what you just said about this pyramid and you talked about new competition philosophies, the streaming services with cable tv, with the social media giants, we are regulating each in a different way. Is it time to in your view may be harmonized that regulation in the loop it . Guest its a great question. I dont think the point is that harmonize the regulation. The point is to understand our goal, our challenge as citizens of the united States Today is to understand what we are doing, what the crisis is, what the nature of the crisis and what we can do about it. So the nature of the crisis is that we see this massive concentration of control over our communications igoogle Facebook And Amazon. By different respects. They use that power in ways that threaten our democracy. They manipulate what we watch. They manipulate what we read. They manipulate how we speak to each other. This is something that americans in the past have never accepted them should not accept now because it is one of the most dangerous things that anybody could accept. Citizens getting over control over communications to a few private corporations. Host Jennifer Huddleston, you get the last word. Guest i think its important that we take a step back for a moment and think about how this conversation would have been different a decade ago. We wouldve been expressing concerns about companies like Aol And Yahoo that are now merely an afterthought and a bit of nostalgia for those of us that are millennials. What weve seen time and time again is that allowing the innovative process to continue is often one of our best elements of Competition Policy. That its important that when we approach issues of Competition Policy that we make sure we remain in a principled and Objective Point of view, and that going forward that we recognize that standards like the Consumer Welfare standards are able to provide that Objective Point of view and adapt to a wide range of industries, including the technology space. Host Jennifer Huddleston is director of technology at the american Action Forum. And Barry Lynn is executive director of the open markets institute. This has been the communicators on cspan. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Were funded by these television companies and more including comcast. Do you think uses just a Committee Center . Its way more than it. 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